 Basic, tasteful, environmentally friendly displays will be the norm for public spaces in 2010. Shopping malls, especially, will be looking to bring customers in with spectacular lighting coupled with traditional design ideas. Offices and municipalities will de-emphasize iconography and will opt for décor with imposing size, rather than artistry. Product life will gain importance, as cost and reuse become bigger factors. The main challenge, it appears, will be for vendors to realize their customers' design visions while staying within budget.
Ken Stolls, president of Lifestyle/Trimco Inc., says the biggest trend in commercial Christmas décor seems to be towards more "green" items including display components that are recyclable, recycled or made of sustainable products. "We see corporate dictates for implementing eco-friendly display solutions, especially during holidays and from public companies that have to answer to shareholders," he explains.
Stolls also notes that many manufacturers are altering their processes to meet that demand. Green products aren't always easy on the budget, but they're getting there. "Nowadays, when a new mall or office building opens, the owners will boast about its being LEED certified, so the décor will be more environmentally friendly too," Stolls states.
Creating Impact
James Espy, president of The James Trogolo Company, says the main trend he's noticed -- especially in malls -- is to attract children by making displays more spectacular.
"We recently decorated one mall with very childlike displays," he reports. "In the same town, we decorated another mall that requested a more adult décor. A local newspaper polled the town's children for their favorite display and the more adult one won, because we filled the ceiling with lights. The kids walked in and their jaws dropped. You have to have the 'wow' element."
As for who's doing the most with Christmas displays, several suppliers say that retailers and municipalities are spending less overall, while office buildings are spending more. "Most likely, they had space available for rent and wanted to stand out as nice places to work," Jackie Bach, CEO of M. Lavine Design Workshop, muses. "They tended to ask for bigger displays, bigger pieces: oversized everything."
Bach reports that silver is more popular than gold and predicts that bronze will be a more important color in 2010. Some clients, she says, opt for traditional colors and looks in one area and a more fashion-forward, experimental display in another part of the venue.
Bottom Line Report
"The biggest trend I'm seeing is in the way our clients do business," Kent Fritzel, chief creative officer at American Christmas, says. "They're postponing their decisions until the last second, largely because of budget issues. As for what they're requesting, most clients have gone back to very traditional ideas. They want to create that warm fuzzy feeling you had with Christmas growing up."
According to Richard Lyford, director of sales/specialty lighting for American Lighting, his employer actually enjoyed a stronger season in 2009 than it did in 2008. This was due in part to several large special orders and the use of non-traditional items such as its LED Wall Washers. These inventive offerings are rated for up to 100,000 hours, require no maintenance and use a combined consumption of only 48 watts. "People are going to LED products because of the long-term price benefits," Lyford notes. "Especially from a commercial aspect -- the return is a lot greater. When there are hundreds of bulbs there is a payback in less than two years in the energy savings."
As for what's hot in terms of colors, styles and iconography, the trend to "big" persists. Religious themes continue to lose popularity and non-traditional colors such as plum and turquoise, which were favored in the prosperous mid-2000s, are slipping too.
Nick Barrango, marketing director of Barrango, says his big sellers are oversized ball ornaments, ranging from two to seven feet in diameter. These can be placed in an elegant pile to serve as the focus of a display, used as accents or stacked in a pyramid to represent a Christmas tree.
"Aluminum trees have staged a comeback, possibly because of a fondness for 'retro,' and silver is gaining popularity over gold," Barrango adds. "We're doing more classic displays, with less iconography. We offer nativity scenes and menorahs, but they're not big sellers. Our ornaments are all fiberglass, which can be considered green or not. They'd last forever in a landfill, but they also last forever for our customers."
At Bronner's, display consultant Kevin Maurer notes that longevity is a top requirement these days, since thrifty clients are more likely to use the same decorations for several years. Moreover, he says, there's greater emphasis on winter in general and fewer displays that represent a specific demographic.
"It used to be nothing for a mall to spend $250,000 on a display," he says. "Now budgets have shrunk to $100,000 and the clients want to know they can get components for renovation, motors for animation and they want to be sure the exact colors of paint will be available for re-touching in the future."
J. Stuart Hurt, showroom manager and lead designer at Corman and Associates agrees that larger installations are becoming more simplified. "Our clients are mostly hospitals and banks and they like 'overscaled,' but nothing symbolic beyond a tree, wreath or customized floral arrangement because they don't want to offend any group," Hurt explains. Some municipal displays have gone strictly with lights, eliminating all figures or icons, Hurt says.
"The biggest trend is that customers have been pushed towards LED lights, but don't want to pay for them," he adds. Hurt contends that most customers are put off by the initial cost of LEDs and that it becomes a matter of convincing buyers that they really do last that much longer.
"Where lighting is concerned," Espy says, "people want the wow and we've responded with a new line of acrylic animals and trees embedded with thousands of acrylic diodes, life-size or larger than life, and very realistic. For example, 22,000 LEDs are embedded into The James Trogolo Co.'s giraffe and they glow for a great distance.
Finding Religion
"Religious themes are pretty much out for public displays, unless paid for and sponsored by private funds," Espy points out. He does remember, however, two major shopping centers in southern Florida that displayed the full crèche within the mall. "I'd not seen that in a long time," Espy muses.
Shlomo Bongart, national account manager of Menorah.net, has noticed the dearth of options for Jewish commercial displays. "Hanukkah's representation in terms of holiday commercial décor is really in its infancy," Bongart asserts. "It gets so little attention, that our goal is to develop Hanukkah for the season."
Menorah.net is the preeminent supplier of commercial-grade, high-quality, stylish menorahs and Bongart believes that while the public has tried to incorporate Jewish icons into holiday displays, there simply haven't been many options. Bongart is hoping to change that.
"Now there is an opportunity to provide for everyone," he exclaims. "We are looking to expand what's available and offer more than just menorahs. The ideal would be to have Hanukkah themes that are more than just one menorah among all the wreaths."
Jason Woodward, Internet sales and marketing manager at Christmas Designers, Inc., says he's seen an increase in nativity scenes in the past couple of years. "I see more high-end menorahs, too," he adds. "People are embracing both religions now."
Efficiency & Longevity
Woodward expresses that the trend to LEDs is growing faster than expected. "They're more affordable; people are learning more about them from the mass media; homeowners are jumping on the bandwagon as well," he explains. "There's still a significant price premium over incandescents, but you get more longevity and spend a lot less on electricity."
LeeRoy Chaffin, vice president of sales and marketing at Dekra-Lite Industries, notes that LED technology allows his customers to afford installations that would not have been feasible with incandescent lighting, since the infrastructure wouldn't have sustained the required power draw.
"With LEDs, you can light a 30-foot frame tree on just one plug," Chaffin says. "For 2010, we've expanded our line of Snowfall products, which are white LEDs that look like falling snow. We've also developed a system that will let us print directly on foam core board, creating wall or floor graphics that are economical and easy to produce."
These innovations bode well for future displays, Chaffin says, since in past years many clients' tastes didn't match their budgets. "We can come close to giving them what they want now," he adds. "We've added a multi-year program, so that a customer who can't afford everything the first year can upgrade over time."
The challenges for the future, vendors say, will be keeping clients up-to-date on technology, ensuring consistency of product and continuing to address environmental issues. "Grow customers' use of LEDs through the introduction of new technologies, colors and control options," Chaffin urges. "Present new items to all customers even if they may not be consistent with current needs."
Stolls affirms that Lifestyles/Trimco Inc. is always looking for less pollutant alternatives to PVC. "We've found more environmentally friendly materials that will work with our manufacturing equipment," he declares. "Now we need to get the costs of those materials down to a palatable price point."
While LEDs offer consumers lighting options that require less maintenance and upkeep, this can create a new problem for manufacturers when customers don't need to return for replacements as often. "The downside to the LEDs for us is their longevity," Lyford admits. "We started selling LEDs to the Denver Zoo and now it only buys a little bit every year. You have to go out and get those new customers because the LEDs last so much longer." |
